NPQ’s Week in Review | July 25 – July 29, 2011

Good Morning! At NPQ, the news moves us—and what moves us is what moves you. Our latest Week in Review highlights what our readers bring to us in the form of tweets, comments, contributed articles, and newswires.

But first take a look at what you might have missed last week in some of the major news stories covered in NPQ.

FOUNDATION PARTNERSHIPS: Public-private partnerships between government and foundations are the cause célèbre in philanthropy. Examples abound, including the collaborative efforts of foundations in Michigan. The model used to be foundations leveraging public money, but increasingly as states struggle through revenue freefalls, public agencies are looking for foundation dollars to do things that they no longer can with missing public funds.

PLAYING CHICKEN WITH THE ECONOMY: The nation’s leaders are still demonstrating, shall we say, a dysfunctional model of governance in the debt ceiling impasse. Nonprofits are more and more worried, not just about the possibility of debt-mageddon driving the nation into economic collapse, but about the fact that the failure of all sides to find common ground will lead to massive cutbacks in federal and state safety net programs. It bodes ill for the nation given how economic conditions for the poor are worsening.

THEM THAT HAS, GETS (MORE): On the heels of news that Teach for America has received 1/3 of all foundation grants to education groups between 2000 and 2008, on top of the huge levels of federal funding it has received years under such programs as i3, now comes word that the Walton Family Foundation (of Wal-Mart fame) is giving TFA $50 million to double the size of its teaching corps.

PREDATORY NONPROFITS: Is there anything more disgusting that phony nonprofits running fundraising scams ostensibly to benefit the tornado-ravaged community of Joplin, Missouri? It may not be directly related to Joplin, per se, but Senator Charles Grassley is once again calling for new regulatory oversight of nonprofits that play fast and loose with the American public.

This article by Michael Alison, Susan Misra and Elissa Perry is a grounded discourse on the importance of shared leadership in the complex environments of the future and on the practices that must be put into play to make it work. This article from the print edition of the Nonprofit Quarterly, Summer, 2011 is chock full of rich case studies and good advice, a combination that our readers always appreciate.

This newswire, which points to consolidations and layoffs at local Red Cross chapters around the country, ends with a question regarding whether or not these changes will diminish the capacity of that organization to mount effective disaster responses. Some suggested that the lack of volunteers and outposts in low-income areas on the Gulf Coast resulted in a slow response post-Katrina. This struck a nerve among some who have been on staff or served as volunteers with the Red Cross. Readers weighed in on both sides.

NPQ’s own Rick Cohen attended the Council on Foundation’s conference on Rural Philanthropy last week and came home with a bird’s-eye view of the issues that were being discussed on the dais and, more informally, in the hallways and break-out sessions. This article was picked up by any number of websites and blogs allowing it to ripple out into communities where NPQ may not yet have adequate reach. Both Rick and NPQ are known for keeping rural concerns on the front page.

Our contributor of the week is Nancy Knoche of Arizona, a regular volunteer Newswire contributor. Often she writes about her own region but this week she contributed a Newswire about AARP and its questionable business practices. Our newswire writers have a special place in our hearts, sharing, as they do, a rich stream of news and analysis from diverse perspectives. If you are interested in contributing in this way we’d be thrilled to hear from you.

Did we miss something this week? What do you want to see us cover next week? Be our eyes and ears on the ground. Don’t hold back. Let us have it. And we’ll put it right here. Just let us know if you want it to be confidential.